5 Lessons Students Can Learn From School Fundraisers
The classroom environment provides learning opportunities that go beyond the content in textbooks. For example, students pick up social and emotional skills, which prepare them to interact with the world around them. There are valuable lessons that can be taught through various activities outside of standard lessons at your school, including school fundraisers.
As you plan your next school fundraiser, consider what your students might gain from participating. There are ways to teach these lessons to students of all age groups, from elementary school students to high schoolers. Here are five things your students can learn:
1. Goal setting
Your school fundraisers earn money for a specific need, and communicating the purpose of each fundraiser to your students can teach them the importance of setting goals. By showing students what your school is working toward and the steps you’re taking to accomplish it, you’ll show them how to set a goal through these steps:
Defining objectives: People who have clear, specific goals are more likely to accomplish them. Through a school fundraiser, your students will learn to identify a need and determine what goal will meet it.
Setting reasonable expectations: Your students will understand the practicality of certain goals by seeing the amount of work it takes to accomplish them. In the future, they’ll be able to set expectations for their goals and measure their progress.
Planning: A school fundraiser gives students the opportunity to understand what it will take to accomplish something. They’ll learn how to set practical steps for achieving a goal.
By setting a goal and involving your students in working toward it, they’ll learn valuable lessons about the ownership of their own ambitions. Throughout your fundraiser, talk with students about their own goals and how they can apply the lessons learned in your fundraiser.
2. Responsibility
Taking responsibility for the school’s goal can teach students to show leadership with any ambition in life, whether it’s something they want or a necessity. Students will learn to take ownership of their daily responsibilities and create actionable plans to achieve their goals.
For example, a fundraiser that aims to buy new desks might teach students to take responsibility for the upkeep of their school. They’ll follow a reasonable plan to accomplish their goal and encourage others to contribute, as well. As it applies to their schoolwork, students will realize that they’re responsible for their education, set goals for their learning, and create plans to achieve those goals.
The healthy habits that come with leading goals can also apply to students’ academic tasks. For example, Read-a-thon suggests fundraising through a reading marathon to raise money for your school while also getting students excited about reading. As your students take ownership of this fundraising goal, reading will become habitual outside of their typical, textbook requirements.
3. Accountability
In the same way that students will learn to take initiative through a school fundraiser, they will also learn accountability for their efforts. These lessons will help them become more independent and prepared for college and the world beyond graduation. Specifically, students will learn:
Independent thinking: Students will learn to manage their goals and progress themselves. This will require them to think and plan without being guided every step of the way.
Responsibility: Students will understand their participation in the fundraiser has serious implications on the success or failure of your school’s goal. This will illustrate that their work matters and makes a difference, so they should take it seriously.
Open-mindedness: A school fundraiser might reveal a need that a student hadn’t considered before. They might originally be unsure about certain parts of your fundraising method, but come to see their effectiveness or enjoy the process of working toward a goal.
Self-reflection: Encourage students to track their progress towards their goals and make observations about what they have accomplished to encourage self-awareness. Are they meeting their goals? Are they working hard enough? Are they working too hard? They’ll learn not only how to take care of their goals, but also how to take care of themselves.
When students have a better grasp on holding themselves accountable for their work, they can also encourage each other. Students who work as a team and support one another will feel even greater personal accountability as they’ll want to be sure they live up to their teammates’ expectations.
4. Time management
As students begin to understand independence, a school fundraiser can also encourage time management. Working to reach a goal by a certain deadline teaches students how to pace themselves when participating in a long-term project.
For example, an activity like creating and distributing fundraising flyers can encourage time management by tasking students with allocating time to several distinct tasks in one larger task. They’ll have to plan how to design flyers, estimate how many they’ll plan, choose places to distribute them, and actually hang the flyers before their deadline.
Encourage this behavior by establishing a time tracking system, such as an hourly to-do list or log of hours worked. This teaches students to set reasonable expectations surrounding how much time they’ll need to complete a task. It can also help them understand the amount of time and work that is needed to achieve an overall goal, which can help with future planning and pacing.
When students see the success of time management within a fundraiser, they’ll understand the skill’s importance in other tasks, as well. They’ll be able to manage their time wisely with homework, club or team commitments, their social lives, and part-time jobs.
5. The reward of earning
At the end of your school fundraiser, students will see how rewarding it is to achieve a goal by earning something themselves. This lesson is especially visible when illustrated with tangible rewards.
For example, a fundraiser that aims to buy new laptops for the school’s classrooms will provide students with the technology they can use to advance their learning. For fundraisers without visible changes to the student’s daily lives, consider incorporating prizes to reward the students for their hard work. Some examples of prizes for school fundraisers include:
Pizza party
School merchandise
Tickets to a sports game, aquarium, or another local experience
Gift cards
Candy
Classroom parties
Dress-up day
By rewarding their fundraising efforts, your school will show students that hard work pays off! They’ll associate accomplishments with hard work and this lesson will translate to other areas of their lives, as well
Final thoughts on school fundraiser lessons
These five lessons are just a few of the ways that school fundraisers can impact students, but just as these lessons can go beyond the classroom, so can the impact. Double the Donation suggests trying new fundraising ideas to engage not only your students, but also the community of supporters they’ll be reaching out to.
Consider fundraiser types that will engage your students and your supporters. When participants are excited about being involved in your goal, everyone wins.
About the Author
Howard Gottlieb: Founder and CEO, Read-a-thon Fundraising Company
Howard Gottlieb has been a serial entrepreneur for more than 35 years. His latest venture, Read-a-thon, is a novel school fundraising concept that truly shifts the paradigm when it matters most. Read-a-thon replaces in-person bake sales, magazine drives and the like with a contactless method of raising much needed cash, one that can be used both in real classrooms and virtual learning spaces. The real bonus? It promotes literacy and gets kids excited about picking up a book.